008

1.3.4.Public buildings: Herod the Great competed with the Romans in the field of public buildings. He had fortresses, cities, harbours,

Thebes West, Hatshepsut

temples and theatres built all over the country. He had the temple area of the Jerusalem temple enlarged to match the dimensions of the Forum Romanum, the inner-city temple district in Rome.

1.3.5.National Literature: During the time of Herod’s successors, the Jews started to compete with Rome in the field of literature. Up to then, they had no written cultural tradition; now they created a new national literature, the writings we know as the Old Testament. They oriented their writing on Roman texts of the republican period that were still much admired in the imperial period.